EvaXephon

Biogaphy

Alex Mahan was born to Theresa Lee Mahan and Mark Paul Mahan on the 30th of June 1988. He has spent most of his life in Temecula, California. After a bullying incident at age twelve, Alex was homeschooled. By his own account, he did not go out much and spent his time playing video games.[1] Although teen-age Alex described his experience of growing-up as uneventful and fairly normal,[2] he also admits to being sheltered and overprotected to the point where exposure to the outside world would provoke anxiety.[3][1] He only reintegrated into society when he went to college in Santa Monica, California to earn an Associate Degree of Arts in Animation, Interactive Technology, Video Graphics and Special Effects. After this, he worked as a Junior Game Designer at Kung Fu Factory for three years, until 2013.

Anime and Video Games

Alex was, and still is, a heavy consumer of video games, anime[4] and television, relying on them as the only window to the outside world in his life. Notably, his username EvaXephon is a tribute to the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion[5]. And he loved playing video games so much that he made a streaming channel to have people share his interest. The stream however did not reflect his collection accurately, as Alex seemed to be also fond of erotic games, especially fetish games such as Rapelay[6] (a game about raping women in public), Haramase[7] (a game about impregnating women) and Artificial Girl 2[8] (a game about living with a girl on an isolated island, also features rape).

These games greatly influenced his tastes in women, as it would be later seen in his numerous posts about female anatomy[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] and the games he attempted to develop.[17]

I had a very different image of what girls are supposed to be painted in my head than what they actually are. I've always wanted a girlfriend who acted youthful, babyish, feminine, innocent, naïve, childlike, pure, uncomplicated, unsophisticated, trusting, charming, polite, pleasant, sweet, lovable, cute, cypheric,malleable…[3]

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EvaXephon

Forums

As a sheltered teen, he relied on the internet for most of his socialization.[18]

In 2005, he joined the Loserz Message Board, where he proceeded to: justify the Columbine shooting, fantasize about attempting genocide to rid humanity of “bad people”,[19][20][21] including people who swear[22] and people who had more than one partner in their lifetime[23]. His statements alarmed the forum members, who urged him to seek counsel from a professional.[24][25][26] EvaXephon did not take any of this advice to heart, however, becoming increasingly passive-aggressive, defensive and insulting towards them.[27][28][29][30][31][32] He left and was banned, in case he changed his mind.[33][34]

Raping a stepdaughter and being a slut are two different things.

It was just an example. And to me, being a slut is the worse of all crimes, the most terrible of all sins, so, to me, there isn't much of a difference.[23]

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EvaXephon

Three years later, the trail picks up on the Gaïa forums. Alex shares his difficulty in starting relationships,[1] which he was warned about on the Loserz Message Board. He blames his looks, which were deemed average or moderately attractive by his fellows, and his lack of self-confidence[35][36]. He showed at the same time an unwillingness to learn about interests other than his own in order to further a conversation and a generally objectifying and negative view of women. He also mentions that he wants to kill his two parents. When reminded he can move out legally at the age of 16, he backpedals.

To this day, Alex has remained single, expressing his bitterness loudly[37], both by requesting erotic pictures on the internet[38] and by wondering if he shouldn’t give up altogether[39][40][36]. It contrasts with other statements where he says he likes himself perfectly the way he was and still doesn’t understand why women were not interested in him[41][36].

EvaXephon Streams

The first time Alex Mahan achieved fame on the Internet was by streaming video games. He was so notoriously bad at streaming and at netiquette that his username itself had become a joke.[42][43][44][45][46][47] He would post daily on /v/ to advertise his stream, in addition to using any account he made on other Message boards to advertise his streams[11][48][49][50]. His spamming was so consistent, that some forums such as /v/ would proceed to delete them as soon as they were posted.[43][1]

EvaXephon used his streams as a way to engage in conversations with women. Any person suspected of being a female received all of his attention[5][42][43]. Upon expressing discomfort, the perceived female would be banned without notice[51][43]. One of them was the fourteen-year-old Sisefs. Twenty-year-old EvaXephon was made aware of her age, subsequently asking for nudes, pictures, and cybersex.[51] Although screenshots of these interactions have been lost, EvaXephon himself has admitted to receiving nudes from a minor and deleting them after the fact that the said girl was underage became public.[52][53] He proceeded to downplay his involvement by calling himself an ephebophile and pointing the finger at the girl for seeking attention.[53][54]

Sources also state that EvaXephon would pirate games[55][43][56], stream them before their release date, die very quickly and proceed to scream at his audience.[43][1] He would also react explosively to any perceived criticism, banning people without notice and insulting them.[42][43][1] This habit got him banning from numerous streaming sites.[46] In 2007, one of the streamers featured on EvaXephon’s channel called Keefers, became the object of EvaXephon’s jealousy. Fed up with EvaXephon’s misconduct, one follower suggested that Keefers made his own stream, getting himself immediately banned. Others followed. In the span of a single night, EvaXephon had lost the vast majority of his audience, banning and insulting them, thus ensuring they would never come back.

In spite of the previous debacle, he still advertises his stream to this day, even under his YandereDev persona, even though he takes great offense to anyone linking him to EvaXephon.[57][58][59][60][61][62][53]

Litterature

Alex Mahan created the community BABES[63] and wrote about Los Angeles Video Game Babes on the Examiner for a while, which covered extensively the breasts of female video game characters and any phenomenon related to them. [1]

EvaXephon was also a prolific writer of fanfiction. All known literary pieces feature sex as a central narrative peace. The most extensive one relates the life of a woman sex-slave who is perfectly happy with her condition and is over 35,000 words long.[64] All fanfictions that have been found feature abuse or sexual violence.

Game Projects

Alex attempted to make his own game to impress the skullgirlz IRC chat.[65] His project was called “Lunar Scythe”. [17] The prototype itself is in 3D and plays like a side-scrolling hack-and-slash game with relatively poor physics and controls.

A big part of the motivation was that I wanted to make a cool game that might impress the prestigious Mike Z and my buddies Skullgirls chat, and look what happened. :/[65]

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EvaXephon

EvaXephon explains in a post that the main character is a teenage girl called Luna, who was revived by Death itself in order to cleanse the world of filth. The post is relatively well-received, although the protagonist, especially her design, is called cliché and unoriginal.[17]

The harshest criticism, however, came from Mike-Z, lead programmer of Skullgirlz, a game well-received for its gameplay and overall design, who was left unimpressed by Lunar Scythe’s coding. The prototype was primitive, lacking most features necessary for a fighting game. The people from the chat, including Mike-Z, encouraged him to work harder and warned him about the limitations of his existing code. After a month, they lost patience and berated him for his attitude.[65]

If there is no gratification for what I've done, then it's literally wasted work.[65]

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EvaXephon

EvaXephon: I'll be impressed when you finish, if it's what you want it to be and bug-free. I don't care if you can do combos or charge meter or don't even have a meter. I care if your code is solid and easy to mess with. And if you're making the game to impress other people you are making it for the wrong reason.[65]

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Mike-Z

Alex held a grudge against the programmer for a long time. By his own admission, this unilateral hatred is what prompted him to start developing Yandere Simulator, for which he is known today.[66]

EvaXephon made numerous game prototypes in addition to Lunar Scythe: Boobie Clicker, an unnamed fighting game featuring two women and Shayda[67] just to name a few. Not to mention all the Yandere Simulator spin-offs. Shayda was criticized on one of the message boards EvaXephon was familiar with for plagiarizing the game Ilji.

YandereDev

Yandere Simulator : a game made for 4chan

History

In 2012, on the /a/ board of 4chan, there existed a "What's your dream game?" thread in which users could talk about the type of game they would like to see. One anonymous user then came up with the idea of making a “hitman-type game with a yandere girl”. [43]

One month later, that user, now under the name "YandereDev", came back with a working sandbox demo of a girl killing characters, which included some of the previously pitched ideas and had models reused from Lunar Scythe. This prototype had garnered a lot of praise. YandereDev then proceeded to cater to the audience of 4chan, declaring he would only stick to the audience of /v/, never create a patreon, never allow a lesbian pairing in his game, never censor anything, never make the game beatable with a method that did not involve murder, delete his game if it was ever discovered by PewDiePie, never create a Kickstarter, and never talk to sites like Kotaku…[43][1][68]

However, he never made good on those promises. That same day, he backpedaled on his statements upon being offered $2,000 for allowing Senpai to be female, stating that a girl-on-girl pairing would be available. The game was also discovered by YouTubers such as Azzman, CinamonToastKen and, in March of 2015, by PewDiePie. The game gained a huge following overnight, resulting in YandereDev establishing a Patreon in order to make the development of Yandere Simulator his full-time occupation. Although this turn of events made /v/ uncomfortable, they were quick to turn a blind eye whenever new easter eggs were added to the game. [43][1]

In 2014, someone has posted proof that YandereDev was none other than EvaXephon[69]. At first, he denied it, but in face of all the evidence, admitted to being EvaXephon and stated that he had changed. The majority of /v/ however, in light of his recent behavior, was not convinced. YandereDev then left 4chan for 8chan. [43][1]

Game

Yandere Simulator is, at its core, a social stealth game, where the protagonist, nicknamed Yandere-chan, seeks to eliminate any competition in order for her to confess to her love-interest, an upperclassman, nicknamed Senpai. The protagonist, Ayano Aishi, is described as an emotionless girl who suddenly develops feelings after meeting this boy. She is so afraid of losing him and has so little empathy towards other people that she is willing to hurt and even murder any perceived rival. It is explained that Ayano Aishi acts the same way as her mother did, who ended up kidnapping and raping her father.

The game is still in early sandbox debug state. There are currently two modes: normal and mission mode, where one plays as a hitman. The player can ride a bicycle around town, walk around Yandere-chan’s room, her basement, and on school grounds. Only one week is playable and there is no way to win the game yet since no official rival is present. The prototype features game mechanics such as kidnapping, torture, murder-suicide, and bullying.

List of all current gameplay features in YandereSimulator

Lethal elimination methods:

The player is given the possibility to murder most NPCs using various melee weapons present in the game, including various knives, scissors, a box-cutter, a syringe, a baseball-bat, weights, a katana, an axe, a circular saw, a magical girl wand, and a shovel.

Dropping weights from the roof, pushing from the roof, electrocution, immolation, drowning, poisoning is currently only available for the test-rival, for a lack of a better term, Kokona Haruka.

Female students are eligible to be kidnapped, broken, indoctrinated through torture in Yandere-chan’s basement to be sent to kill the test-rival on the beginning of the next day. Male students cannot be kidnapped.

Non-lethal elimination methods:

The player can befriend the current test-rival by completing quests and is offered mid-way multiple ways to kill her.

The current test-rival can be set up with a suitor.

The current test-rival can also be framed for bad behavior, which results in an expulsion, framed for murder or bullied into quitting school altogether.

Evidence disposal methods: the player must dispose of all evidence or else Yandere-chan will be arrested by the police.

The victim’s body can be shredded, buried, temporarily hidden in a bathroom stall or an empty room, or burnt in the incinerator.

Bloody clothing, weapons, bodies and body-parts can be incinerated. The bodies can be carried to the incinerator as is, or dismembered beforehand in order to fit into garbage cans or instrument cases. Blood stains are to be mopped up. The protagonist also has to change into a new set of clothes and wash the blood off of her body.

The protagonist’s sanity meter decreases every time she commits a crime. In order to avoid suspicion, she must “use” a picture of a Senpai in a secluded place or laugh.

One can avoid suspicion altogether by using masks and gloves to frame the current test-rival for a murder.

Player interactions: the protagonist can compliment, apologize for a recent indiscretion, and befriend some NPCs. If befriended or seduced, the NPC may follow, distract another NPC or leave the premises on command. The protagonist can also gossip to bring another’s player reputation down. Each time Yandere-chan is spotted being suspicious, like carrying a weapon, being visibly insane, bloody, laughing or attempting to harass someone, she gets a reputation penalty. The more strange things that happen on school grounds, the more paranoid the NPCs will become as a result of a lowering school atmosphere.

The protagonist can join clubs in order to get perks and additional interactions.

If spotted while being suspicious, carrying a body or murdering someone by NPCs, they will react to the protagonist. Teachers will apprehend her, heroic students will attempt to fight her, other students may run away and/or plead for mercy…

The protagonist cannot get close to Senpai. Otherwise, the screen becomes pink, Yandere-chan walks slowly with her hands cupped and upon being spotted by Senpai three times, he will break her heart. If Senpai spots Yandere-chan being involved in a murder or carrying a weapon, he berates her resulting in a game over. If Senpai spots Yandere-chan being visibly insane or bloody, he immediately assumes she has hurt someone resulting in a game over.

Delinquents will attack and send the protagonist into a coma if they spot them with a body or if attacked. They are currently the only NPCs to be invincible.

Sidekick: Info-chan will provide the protagonist with information and items.

If texted the face of a student, she will provide basic information on them.

She sells compromising information, schemes (tutorials), items and other services.

The only currency she accepts is panty shots. One has to crawl, snap a picture of a female student’s panties and send them to Info-chan without getting caught. If spotted by students, the protagonist suffers a minor reputation loss. If spotted by a teacher, the protagonist is expelled.

Planned features

The final game is supposed to take place in the span of ten weeks, with a new rival appearing each Monday. Yandere-chan has a week to stop the rival from confessing to Senpai or to make the confession fail. The said confession will take place on a hill by the cherry tree at six in the evening.

The game is supposed to feature around one hundred NPCs, including teachers and students, divided into six classes, two per grade.

The students will have a reaction to blood and blood traces.

Future elimination methods will include ten rival-specific ones and selling schoolgirls into sex-slavery and selling schoolboy’s organs with the help of a Yakuza, known by one of the delinquents.

Kidnapping multiple schoolgirls, not boys, may become possible in the future as well.

A female Senpai is planned to be featured.

Yandere-kun, a male counterpart of Yandere-chan will be playable if a certain Kickstarter stretch goal is reached, although YandereDev has expressed discomfort in adding him to the game. All the rivals, however, will remain females.

A street or a small town is also supposed to be added.

As stated numerous by the man himself, all animations, models, and textures are placeholders and will eventually be replaced.

YandereDev has the habit of adding and proposing new features as he comes across them in other games, therefore delaying the development of the game even further. The game has been in development for four years and a proper demo has yet to be released. Most of the game's features themselves cannot properly interact with each other and are buggy, which gives an aspect to the game.

Perhaps the most amateurish aspect is that the entire known cast of characters have their names either taken from other known characters or derived from English words transcripted to Japanese, Japanese words, expressions or had their given names and surnames picked from lists of popular Japanese first names. The only character whose name and appearance appear to be original is the protagonist: Ayano Aishi, even though her surname is unlikely to exist in Japan. The only characters who could pass-off as having Japanese names are Senpai Taeko/Taro Yamada and their sister Hanako Yamada, even though Hanako’s popularity would make it unlikely for a young girl to bear.

Kuu Dere = Kudere describes a character archetype who acts composed, cold and distant towards their loved ones. Her appearance is ripped off one of the very characters who popularized the term, Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Mai Waifu = a transcription to Japanese of the words “my wife” used by anime fans to describe an imaginary character they would like to be in a relationship with.

Midori Gurin = Midori means green (緑) in Japanese while Gurin is the transcription to Japanese of the word green (グリーン).

Ryuto Ippongo = Ryuta Ippongi features in the rhythm game Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan.

Musume Ronshaku = Musume (娘) means daughter while Ronshaku is the transcription to Japanese of the words loan shark (ローンシャーク). Her father owns a loan shark company.

Game Development: a one-man project

YandereDev has been developing the game as a one-man team for more than three years with the help of volunteers who create models, animations, music, voiced lines, textures and art for him. Once the assets are supplied to him, they become YandereDev’s intellectual property.

Yandere Simulator’s development was held back admittedly by the number of emails the developer received from his fans. Alex Mahan gave away the same e-mail address he used to communicate with volunteers to the public so that they could submit private bug reports when testing the build. After it gained sudden visibility in 2015, he was swarmed with crash logs, bug-reports, requests to volunteer and suggestions practically overnight. Instead of switching to another tactic such as hiring a secretary or naming dedicated testers, he aggressively went after his own fanbase.

Nowadays, the e-mail problem seems to have been solved, as YandereDev now blames the slow pace of his volunteers and his own code for the lack of progress.

Programming

Alex Mahan’s main skill, programming, has come under fire multiple times, especially because of the poor performance of his debug builds.[70]

The frame rate is irregular, and often drops below 25 fps or even below 15 fps in particularly crowded places on high-end machines, the same machines run AAA games smoothly. The gaming experience is also heavily impacted by bugs, the newest builds featuring some that have been left unsolved for years, such as poor mesh deformation, inaccurate collision, and models getting stuck into structures. These bugs are so prevalent and numerous, that some of the most popular YouTubers covering Yandere Simulator have made entire series about finding and experimenting with them.

YandereDev explained the poor frame rate in relation to the draw distance, the number of models and the way each NPC had to constantly check the surroundings… However, the internet denizens who have decompiled the code in search for answers say otherwise.

The code is not structured. It includes several thousand lines with only three classes for 20 000 lines of code. Redundancy is rampant. Poor garbage collection system. According to Mahan, TinyBuild was supposed to improve the code, but the truth is it was merely ported as is, with minor adjustments to C# in Unity 5.[71]

The reason YandereDev had made the builds available was to improve the gaming experience based on the audience’s feedback. He got angry at fans sending him crashlogs and has admitted that he in fact unable to read them or understand them. Similarly, when the launcher became available, the developer has admitted to not programming it and asked for people to not inform him of any malfunctions.

After lengthy backlash and ridicule from 8chan, Alex admitted to being a mediocre programmer,[72] and described himself at being good at making prototypes, implementing “low-hanging fruit”, but lacking in all other areas. He took back his statement however when faced with an avalanche of suggestions asking him to finally hire a programmer, writing that he is, in fact, a decent programmer. He even refused to have a programmer revise his code for free, several times, showing that may not want to deliver a stable product. It seems that he still hasn’t learned to take criticism from people with a similar or often higher technical skill as him.[66]

Volunteers

The project is heavily dependent on volunteers. They supply YandereDev with 3D-models, textures, art, animations, music, and voice acting.

YandereDev has stated on multiple occasions that he expects the assets provided to be of professional quality and supplied by experienced artists with impressive portfolios. He has however shown himself to be unwilling to pay for them, as only 3 known volunteers have been paid so-far, out of the sixty-five recorded volunteers[73] (there are more) who have worked under him. Running a popular and well-known project, YandereDev may be trading recognition and broader opportunities in exchange for assets. The volunteers not being credited in-game, unlike the sponsors, or on the official website, or on the official development blog, or on the official YouTube channel, or sometimes not even in the videos, undermines the nature of such mutual benefits. The only place where they are consistently credited is the wiki fanon page, a site disavowed by YandereDev.[74]

Volunteers have been involved in scandals regularly since the beginning of the project.[75][76] The person responsible for linking YandereDev to EvaXephon on reddit is one of Yandere Simulator’s ex-volunteers. Upon leaving the project, Deelekgolo felt necessary to inform the public of YandereDev’s past as EvaXephon.[52] As reasons for leaving the project, the volunteer mentioned the developer’s interference in contacting other volunteers directly, casual disrespect, simultaneously adding pressure and refusal to compensate him for his work, but cited the development’s disturbing direction as the main reason for leaving. Design showing rampant sexualization of schoolchildren, gameplay focused on explicit sexual violence towards minors, and Yanderedev’s past soliciting a minor had made Deelekgolo uncomfortable enough to refuse to take any further part in the project, even with the promise of payment. Their exchange even revealed that the core members of YandereDev’s team have made it their main goal to make the game as exploitative as possible towards young girls.<ref=Deelekgolo/>

I’m a perverted sexual deviant, and I absolutely love to perv on sexy video game girls and anime girls. That’s a core part of who I am, and I’ll openly, publically, and eagerly state that fact, absolutely anywhere. […] I’ve already found 5 other perverts, now I just need to find one who can model props and environments.[75]

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EvaXephon

A number of volunteers have left since then, and continue to leave the project regularly.[77] Druelbozo, for example, who was considered by both the fanbase and Yandere Simulator’s detractors to be the best 3D-modeler YandereDev had assistance from to date, left the project in order to enter a professional career that would provide him a pay worthy of his technical skill. A month before Druelbozo definitively left, YandereDev paid him 8,500 dollars, admittedly to keep him on the project.[78] They parted on cordial terms. It is not true, however, for most ex-volunteers.

Theft

Some of the feuds YandereDev had with ex-volunteers were based around the theft of their intellectual property. It highlights Alex Mahan’s wide-spread habit of claiming other’s property as his own or using it as "place-holder" without their authorization. Which is ironic, knowing that he has tried to prevent other people from using store-bought assets that he himself had previously used, claiming they were “his”.

Sans' likeness and the audio track Megalovania from the video game Undertale by Tobyfox[82]

A Grass Texture

An AI Model

Music from Attack on Titan

Nemesis’ likeness

Kuu Dere's design. Huge resemblance to Rei Ayanami from Evangelion

Furredo Jonzu, who is none other than Fred Jones from Scooby-Doo

Pippi Osu and Ryouto Ippongo from the game Osu!

Artists have shown themselves to be reluctant to report YandereDev because of a sense of fear and powerlessness.[83] He often goes after the art of people who are either not well-known or who would have difficulty suing him.[79]

YandereDev makes money indirectly through YouTube videos covering the development of the game and the Patreon. Therefore, any asset used in a build used to demonstrate his ability, and in turn to keep interest in his Patreon, is used to make money and should be compensated accordingly.

Marketing and Funding

Media

Alex Mahan uses social media in order to engage with his audience and maintain interest in his product. He updates his development blog as well as his YouTube channel with a video at least bi-monthly and shows his unprofessionalism on Twitter, Reddit, Twitch and in the comment section of YouTube in-between.

When his game is mildly criticized by the media, notably for its sexual violence towards schoolchildren, YandereDev has shown himself to be frighteningly aggressive.[84] When a journalist asked him about the disturbing focus of his game on little children, he ridiculed her for being raped as a child.[85] When Twitch banned his game from their site, he accused them of specifically targeting both him and his game, out of spite, encouraged other developers and his fanbase to spam their servers, target and harass Twitch employees at conventions, before backpedaling with a third video.

Reasons Yandere Simulator was banned from Twitch

Sexual Content.

Nudity of children.

Sexual Content targeting children.

Violence targeting children.

Violence in a school setting. (School shootings are actually a thing in America)

It is unlikely that Twitch would ban a game, even an indie title, based on one of these reasons alone, but all of them combined would make the risk of a controversy large enough to outweigh any potential gain. However, Twitch specifically prohibits erotic games from being streamed, that is, games with the main focus being sexual gratification. By these standards, the debug build of Yandere Simulator that focuses on sexualizing minors through panty-shots, kidnapping and with every rival’s specific blackmail revolving around sex has already been classified as a fetish-game (erotic game focusing on minors) by some sites[86][87] and it only be a matter of time before other streaming services decide the same.

The success of his debug test build rests largely on Let’s Players and Alex tries to cater to them by adding specific easter eggs. It didn’t deter him, however, from asking for a part of their revenue and blaming one of the first YouTubers to have ever shown interest in his game in for leaks he was responsible for himself. After r/yanderesimulator was hacked, Azzman made a video surrounding the numerous disputes YandereDev was involved. His entire channel was soon demonetized. After putting up a new channel and answering questions concerning bad blood between him and Alex, he was accused of defamation once again by the developer, an act that even the Yandere Simulator fanbase found ridiculous.[88][89]

His own fanbase is the most consistent target of his fire as he has blamed them repeatedly for the slow development of his game. Just like under the username EvaXephon, he regularly insults them on streams[90] and threatens them. When his fan base does not follow him blindly, he simply creates sockpuppet accounts to defend himself aggressively, pressures moderators so that they censor anything that is an inconvenience to him, and responds to questions by asking people to message him privately despite complaining about emails on a regular basis.[91] He also simultaneously advertises his EvaXephon and YandereDev streams but cries about the invasion of privacy each time anything about them is brought up.[92]

In the same way that he attacks anyone that does not portray him in an absolutely positive light, YandereDev has targeted the PC modding community, accusing them of delaying the development of the game by having more crash-logs being sent to him.[93] It’s ironic, seeing as the pose mode, now available in-game, was originally a mod.[94] Even YouTubers who stated they did not want to play mods started using them when progress became scarce. Modding actually ensured a financial stability to YandereDev while the progress was being slow. Instead of showing the community any respect, he has devoted time to help erotic games like Strip Poker Night at the Inventory implement his lead character by supplying them with art and dialog.[95]

YandereDev attacks anyone he suspects of making a game vaguely similar to his own. He has targeted Yandere School on social media, a game inspired by Yandere Simulator that came out in September 2017. He accused the developers of theft, asked YouTubers not to play the game, and generally treated them with next to no respect.[96] He has also attempted to defame the developers of Love Me, a game also inspired by Yandere Simulator’s premise, but that hasn’t much in common with it at this point.[97][98]

YandereDev gets called out repeatedly by, even his own fanbase, for spending too much time starting comment wars on the internet and on his inability to take criticism and defensiveness in general.[99][100] When he feels he can no longer attempt to justify his behavior, Alex Mahan proceeds to ignore them.[101][102]

Financial Situation

YandereDev has a Patreon enabling him to work full-time on his project since 2015. His average income in 2016 was above $4,000 per month and has earned at least $96,000 on Patreon alone during the last two years (the development started 3 years ago). YandereDev also has a YouTube channel, where he posts videos bi-monthly. The channel is monetized. His revenue is unknown, as he systematically accuses anyone who shows interest in his finances of being a troll,[103][104] but it is estimated to be anywhere from $2,000 to $32,000 monthly as his videos are very successful. During the last two years, he has, at worst, earned an additional $48,000 through YouTube.

The only known paid volunteers are Druelbozzo, Britanny Lauda and Mom0ki, which totals to an average of $12,000 worth of expenses at most. Alex Mahan lives in California, where the cost of living is high. Fortunately, he lives with his very wealthy parents, their house alone being worth over a million dollars. As far as expenses go, he has no student debt[5] and has to pay, at most, medical insurance and compensation for staying at home. The latter is unlikely as his mother still cooks and cleans for him as demonstrated during one of his streams. His expenses would, at most, amount to $600 for a room + $400 for food, electricity, and water.

It all totals to $108,000 on his hands for the last two years as a conservative estimate. His estimated revenue is probably a lot higher and his reluctance to hire a programmer, modeler, animator or writer is unjustifiable with these numbers.

Whatever the actual sum may be, it clearly isn’t enough. He has stated multiple times that he thinks he deserves a cut from revenue Let’s Players generated playing Yandere Simulator, that his salary is not nearly as high as it deserves to be[72]... He also tried to sell merchandise several times before the game’s demo release. The first attempt featured a young Asian model wearing Yandere Simulator’s bland logo,[105] the second one was dropped due to failure by YandereDev to make a contract with an independent young artist. He had asked for a 20% cut, which is a lot by industry standards. When the artist, alarmed by theft allegations, asked for a legal contract, Alex simply canceled the deal stating she was being rude.[106][102] His third attempt at capitalization came to fruition, as he now sells merchandise on his website.

He doesn’t work. He streams up to 13 hours per day, despite claiming to work between eight to twelve hours a day on the game and only taking one day of vacation per month, and yet, during the past few months, he streamed ten hours a day on average, leaving him little time to do any kind of progress.[107] He gets extremely defensive when called out on his laziness and says that he isn’t obliged to work, despite being paid.